Lambda, Ōsumi, and Great Expectations - The Push for Japan's First Satellite

Japan's space program had remarkably modest beginnings. In a fifteen year time span, they went from rockets that were less than a foot tall and just slightly more powerful than the average model rocket to launching much larger rockets into space and into orbit. The journey to that goal was not that easy, though, as there were many stumbles along the way. That's the history of technology, however; you try, and if you fail, you try again.

It was with ISAS' first orbital rocket that the stumbles really come into play. That rocket was the Lambda 4S series.

Image courtesy
Orbital Aspirations,
Ed LeBouthillier

The Lambda was the fourth major solid fuel rocket design to come from the ISAS under Professor Hideo Itokawa. It built upon the successes of the earlier Kappa, which was proving to be quite a successful sounding rocket. Like its earlier siblings, the Lambda was a solid fuel rocket, though quite a bit larger. An even larger rocket was being designed to follow the Lambda, the Mu series, which were planned from the outset with satellite launching in mind.

These would be put on hold when it was discovered that with some simple modifications, the Lambda might be able to loft a satellite into orbit. The caveat was that the satellite couldn't be that big. By this point, earlier iterations of the Lambda rocket were being launched. As initially conceived, the Lambda series were designed to probe deep into space, with altitudes of over 1000 miles (1600 kilometers). This is different than an orbital launch, of course, but the potential was there. Professor Hideo Itokawa's team saw this as a means to an end. For them, this was about having the honor of launching the first satellite for Japan.

Indeed, they weren't alone. There were other groups within Japan that sought the same, but Itokawa wanted his team from the University of Tokyo and ISAS to be first. Development of the Mu series was slowed down so that efforts to convert the Lambda into a satellite could commence. 

The resulting design was the L-4S. 

This was a four stage design, hence the "4" in its designation (the "S" for satellite). To achieve the necessary first stage velocity, the rocket would use two slender solid fuel strap on boosters on the first stage. The complete solid fuel rocket stood just over 54 feet (16.5 meters), making it the smallest and lightest land based satellite launcher ever built. The satellite would physically attached to the fourth stage, a small spherical solid fuel rocket. 

But no guidance system would be used for the rocket. This rail launched rocket would use a combination of aerodynamics, gravity, and timing to carry its payload into orbit. The engineer's reasoning had to do with Japan's new constitution, as it was felt that a guidance system could be easily used for military, and potentially offensive, purposes. Rather than take that chance, they chose this simpler approach.

The problem was that while the Lambda sounding rockets were fairly capable, the L-4S was proving not to be. The first attempt to loft a satellite, in September of 1966, failed. So did the next two launches, in December of '66 and April of '67. 

The failure of the ISAS team to launch a satellite was proving to be something of crisis for Prof. Itokawa. In addition to the failures, the much more promising Mu rocket was delayed, one that it was hoped could launch a satellite into orbit in 1968. There were also accounting abnormalities at the institute, and the media attention painted the institute in a negative light. Professor Hideo Itokawa resigned as a result.

Before the ISAS could regroup, another problem surfaced, and it wasn't technical in nature. Fisherman expressed concern about the launches being done from Kagoshima. For seventeen months, there would be no rocket launches from the pads at Uchinoura. 

Once they resumed, a test launch, L-4T-1, was conducted, and while not perfect, pointed to where the problems existed and what steps needed to be taken. 

The fourth Lambda, L-4S-4, was launched in September 1969 to great expectations. Sadly, like the previous L-4S rockets, it, too, failed, the result of a collision between upper stages during separation.

One more attempt would be made.

On February 11th, 1970, the L-4S-5 would launch Japan's first satellite, Ōsumi, would be successfully orbited. It would have a fairly elliptical orbit, with a perigee of 220 miles (350 km) and an apogee of 3,190 miles (5140 km). While it functioned for less than a day (it is speculated that the temperature variations were greater than expected, thus leading to battery failure), this almost 53 pound (24 kg) satellite gave Japan the honor of being the fourth nation to launch a satellite on an indigenous booster, behind Russia, the United States, and France. 

In comparison, the delayed Mu series proved to be far more successful, leading to the MV series that would fly until 2006. 

When we look back at the history of the the Lambda series and the events leading to Japan's first satellite, one thing becomes readily apparent, and that is that it really is a human story. The rush for the honor of launching Japan's first satellite actually interfered with work on the more capable rocket design. However, it was just enough to give Japan the lead over the next spacefaring country, China, which would launch its Dong Fang Hong I satellite on April 24th, 1970. A Mu series rocket would finally orbit a satellite on February 16th, 1971, a full year after Ōsumi. One more delay would have placed Japan behind China.

More than anything else, however, the Lambda satellite attempts proved that a small, simple launcher could carry a small enough satellite into orbit. With today's technology, such a small payload could be made to do amazing work.

As for Ōsumi, a combination of gravity and atmospheric drag would eventually bring the long dead satellite down on August 2nd, 2003, more than thirty two years after it placed Japan's space program firmly in history.

Image courtesy Wikipedia/Rlandman

(I would like to thank Ed LeBouthiller for technical information, as well as the L-4S drawing. If you would like to read more on the technical aspects of the Lambda satellite launchers, I highly recommend his page on the subject - RL)

Charles Seife, NASA & Angry Pandas

A week or so back, science writer Charles Seife wrote a piece wherein he compared NASA to a panda.

Of course, there was more to it than just that. The main thrust of his piece was how NASA's focus on human spaceflight was endangering its other programs, namely the science programs, and how in many ways the agency was its own worse enemy. 

The piece raised some valid points. However, Mr. Seife did, as expected, raise more than a few eyebrows with some of his statements, and also raised the ire of many NASA supporters, including the Planetary Society's Casey Dreier, who wrote a piece answering Mr. Seife point per point.

Within the realm of social media, a storm brewed, and soon a flurry of tweets and posts appeared supporting the pro-NASA position. To these, Mr. Seife decided to respond.

And made the mess even worse.

He dug his heels in, and shared some of the tweets on his blog. He seemed to revel in the brouhaha he created, and didn't budge or explain his position. Which is all well and good, except that in responding as he did, he seemed to have come across as childish. In other words, while we are often told that popular science writers need to write to eighth graders, it is not necessary to act as one.. While I initially felt that he raised many salient points in his original piece at Slate, I now feel that his behavior is rapidly becoming one of an opportunistic publicity seeker. 

With that, he lost. His arguments, no matter how valid they were, now seem like a cry for attention.

From A Pencil To A Space Program - The Humble Beginnings of Japan's Reach For Space

In the United States, the space program really began with the first tests of captured V-2 (A-4) rockets from Germany, as well as with American designs, not long after the end of World War II. This happened in the Soviet Union  as well, though instead of just using captured V-2's, they chose to build their own from components and plans found in the crumbling remnants of the Third Reich. Other countries would begin messing with rockets of their own, and by the 1950's, the atmosphere was being probed by a variety of countries. 

One country that wanted to get involved in rocket research was Japan. The strict rules laid down after its defeat mandated that they would have to wait a number of years before beginning anything that could be considered weapons research. By 1954, they were in a position to begin developing their own rockets. The man who led this research was Professor Hideo Itokawa.

In the late 1930's, this promising young aeronautical engineer kicked off his career with Nakajima, designing the Ki-43 Hayabusa for the Imperial Japanese air force. He followed this with the Ki-44 Shoki, which also proved to be a nimble fighter plane. When the war ended, he returned to University of Tokyo and completed his graduate studies. He took up a teaching position at the university, and began thinking about rockets. 

His first rocket was really a joke. He had a student build a paper rocket, ostensibly for wind tunnel testing. Once presented with the completed "rocket", he took it outside and photographed it on the lawn. He gave the photo to a local paper, which was published with a caption that read ""Domestic Rocket No.1 Manufactured Experimentally at University of Tokyo". This was early January of 1955.

Soon, he would manufacture his first true rocket. It was simply called "Pencil". 

(Image by Momotarou2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pencil_Rocket.jpg)

It was small, a little over 9" tall and less than 3/4" in diameter. Think about those measurements for a moment. If they sound familiar, it's because they are very similar to those of a typical model rocket. In fact, the first model rocket patented in the United States was larger, the Carlisle Rock-a-Chute Mark I.

That's where the similarity stops. The Pencil was made out of metals, such as aluminum, and used a solid fuel that ran almost the entire length of the body tube. This fuel was a based on a smokeless charge, a combination of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose. As a result, it was a bit more powerful than your stock model rocket.

When it was initially tested, it was somewhat captive, "flying" along a line and through a series of barriers that allowed Itokawa and his team of researchers to measure its speed and thrust. 

More tests were conducted, and eventually three different versions of the Pencil would be developed; a longer version, named "Pencil 300", so called for its length of 300mm (almost 12"), and a two stage version.

(Image courtesy JASA)

 The first truly free flight of a Pencil took place on August 6th, 1955, on the beach at Michikawa. The rocket used was a Pencil 300. After a false start, where the rocket fell off the pad at the point of ignition and did a few acrobatics on the beach, it was reloaded and fired again, this time with success. It soared to over 1950 feet, and downrange of almost 2300 feet. 

It was a roaring success. 

Michikawa would become the first launch site for Japan's reach into space. 

Prof. Itokawa at a launch. Quite an impressive setup.
(Image courtesy JAXA)

Soon, the Pencil would be replaced with the Baby, a much larger two stage rocket. 

Hideo Itokawa and a Baby
(Image courtesy JAXA)

The Baby, in turn, led to the Kappa series of sounding rockets, which Japan would use during the International Geophysical Year, 1957 - 1958. 

Kappa sounding rockets.
(Image courtesy JAXA)

Professor Itokawa's team would form the core of what would be the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, which is now a part of JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. The rocket that would follow in the footsteps of the Kappa would be the Lambda series. 

(Image courtesy Momotarou2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lambda_Rocket_Launcher.jpg)

The sixth launch attempt with a Lambda rocket, the L4S-5, would launch Japan's first satellite, Ohsumi, on February 11, 1970, some fifteen years after Itokawa's first experiments.

And it all started with a Pencil.

The Shuttle As Glider - MSC-042A & the Titan IIIL6

In the last months leading up to North American Rockwell winning the contract for the space shuttle, there was still plenty of push for some totally different designs. Since at least  the beginning of 1971, TAOS, or "Thrust Augmented Orbiter System" was becoming the leading concept. In this design, there would no longer be a flyback booster. Instead, the shuttle would carry drop tanks for its own engines, and use boosters to provide crucial thrust at  liftoff. 

The older designs persisted, but it was becoming apparent that they wouldn't make the final round. The leading orbiter design, MSC-040, was a delta winged spacecraft that would carry 3 engines and an orbital maneuvering system on a vehicle that was equipped with a 15' x 60' cargo bay.

A variation of this design was MSC-042A.

This design was a glider.

In plan, it was essentially identical to the MSC-040 designs, though one variation,  MSC-042B, did revert to the straight winged Faget DC-3 derived designs. Otherwise, the specifications were similar, though sometimes stated as having a smaller cargo bay, 12' x 40', and with a lower capacity.

To carry MSC-042A (and B) aloft, a booster would be used.

This idea had several proponents, notably George Low, deputy administrator of NASA. The Office of Management and Budget also liked it, as its development would be far less costly,  or so it was hoped. 

To lift this large space plane into orbit, a Saturn IB class booster would be required. The  folks at Martin Marietta had such a design in mind.

The Titan IIIL.

This was not just an evolved Titan II/III. This rocket was a beast. The liquid fueled core  would be 15' in diameter and be equipped with four engines. It could be flown with two, four or six solid fuel boosters, stretched versions of the ones found on the Titan III series.

Courtesy the Aerospace Projects Review Blog

George Low, and others,  felt that this approach might lead to a more incremental development path for the shuttle that was potentially lower in costs. 

From late summer of 1971 to at least November, this design was considered. However, it had its opponents, among them LeRoy Day, the deputy director of the shuttle program. In T.A. Heppenheimer's "The Space Shuttle Decision", you find this from Day - 

"You had to put this thing on top of on enormous booster which you had to 

throw away each time. And so you had an operating cost that was getting to 

be kind of ridiculous. The vehicle size and everything — it didn 't have much 

utility. It was kind of a demonstration. It would certainly have been a 

research vehicle that you could have studied re-entry with. When you got all 

through with that then you would have said, ''Gee, that would be nice if it was 

big enough to really do something." Then you would have to turn around and 

build another vehicle. And with the way the budget climate looked, we were 

pretty sure that we 'd be shut out. We 'd never be able to say, "Okay, now let's 

start up a real program and build another one that will be an enlarged version 

and have more capability." The 0MB and Congress would never support 

it; it would be like two different programs, and we said, "That'll be the death 

of it for sure."

He probably had a point. NASA was already reeling from one cut after another to its human spaceflight program, and the shuttle was beginning to become unpopular. In the end, the  glider design would never progress. There were studies undertaken in the 1980's (prior to  the loss of Challenger) that proposed an engineless orbiter being carried into space on a  stack where the three SSME's would be moved to the bottom of the external tank (the  so-called "Class IV Shuttle Derived Vehicle). The company conducting these studies? None  other than Martin Marietta. 

If NASA had gone with a glider, it is of little doubt that the program would have been  entirely different. In many ways, it would have been like an American version of the Buran,  which was essentially the same idea.

When you study the history of the program, one thing you notice, early on, is how closely  North American Rockwell's designs were to official NASA designs, and vice versa. I have  always suspected that they were in the lead for winning the contract from the beginning. If  they had gone with the MSC-042A design, I wonder if NAR would have wanted to participate;  most of their designs relied on TAOS or flyback boosters. In my study, I chose an MSC-042A  that was based on an MSC-040 derived design from McDonnell Douglas. It would have been a  pure delta, but still familiar. It also would have been very tall, between the height of a  Saturn V and Saturn IB. We see it after the six solid rocket motors have ignited, and the  whole stack has begun to move.

Like LeRoy Day, I believe that if NASA had gone that route, the outcome might have proven to  be a far cry from what finally happened, and not necessarily for the better. With the big  stack design like the MSC-042A/Titan IIIL6, there was plenty of room for error. 

In the end,  we can only speculate.

Columbia +11

I wrote this initially for my blog, but instead posted it to my Facebook page - 

"Today is February 1st, 2014. 

It is a Saturday.

Eleven years ago today was also a Saturday. 

My wife Tracie and I were sitting in the Twin Colony Diner in Torrington. This was a fairly typical thing for us on Saturday mornings. Shortly, we would commence to doing our normal weekend routine; hit a couple of book stores, do some scenic driving, as it wasn't that cold a day.

I ordered my usual (a waffle, two sausage links, glass of milk). 

The diner has televisions hung in various locations, almost all turned to FOX News. The food had only just arrived at the table when I caught an interesting video on the screens. It was a blue sky, with something streaking through it, leaving numerous trails. This looked familiar.

I looked at my watch. As I recall, it was about 9:25 am. My blood instantly ran cold.

Two weeks before, we gathered all the students in the main lobby at the Talcott Mountain Science Center to watch the launch of Columbia. It looked to be a fairly typical flight. I had to explain to my students that this was not an ISS launch, and how there had been talk of converting Columbia into something called a "long duration orbiter". Some of the students followed the mission. 

And now, I was certain I knew what I was seeing.

I got up from my booth and walked to the television, and asked the waitress to turn it up. 

By this point, there was little doubt.

Columbia had broken up over Texas.

As had happened seventeen years before, tears started flowing. I returned to the table, and Trae asked what's wrong. I pointed to the television, as more videos were now being posted.

I think all I could say was "Columbia. We lost Columbia."

A few days later, we stopped at the diner again, this time for dinner. It was on a Tuesday night, as I recall. The air was crisp, a little colder, but unlike Saturday, was clear. At my desk, I had been running a couple of satellite tracking programs, and knew to look up as we left. It was about 6:30 pm. As we approached the car, I looked up. Far overhead, the International Space Station traced a path across the winter sky. It looked so lonely as it passed so far overhead."

There is so much more I'd like to say, like how I knew this would be the death knell for the shuttle program and how it could possibly be the same for the US manned space program. But not now.

The Junk Man & The Moon - “Salvage 1”, The “Vulture”, & Andy Griffith

1979 rolled around and was looking somewhat dreadful where my love of space was concerned. Not only was I a sophomore, which is hard enough, but it was looking, to me at least, like space was slipping from too many peoples' collective radars. The shuttle program was woefully behind schedule. Any talk about space colonization within government circles, and in most circles actually, had been subdued, almost defeated. We were still months away from President Carter's "malaise" speech, but for most of America, that was definitely the feeling.

Within my own life at that time, it was pretty damned descriptive. 

Even as a young person, I knew that if you wanted to keep such a big idea going, you had to keep it in the public eye. I was hoping that "Star Wars" would do that for space, and to a degree it did. The summer of 1978, however, saw the release of "Capricorn 1", about a faked Mars missions; a movie that used Apollo hardware no less, and was more than just a veiled hint that the lunar landings might have been faked. 

That didn't help.

When "Battlestar Galactica" premiered during the fall of 1978, I was, once again, hopeful. The movie, and the first few episodes, were really good. But then, it started to get somewhat, well, silly. 

Around this time, I was buying "Starlog" magazine on a fairly steady basis. I didn't catch every issue, so I was a bit surprised one night when sitting through an episode of "Galactica" that I see a commercial for a movie coming up on our local ABC affiliate on the night of January 20th. 

"Salvage".

That's how I remember it, though it was actually "Salvage1". It starred Andy Griffith, an actor who was crucial to my growing up. For a long time, he was the dad I wanted. Him and Mike Brady, actually. There were also some other actors in the movie, names I didn't recognize, but with faces that looked familiar.

And the 20th was that Saturday.

We didn't have a VCR. They were very expensive, something my working class family could not afford. But I did have a nice GE Mini-Cassette recorder. A two hour movie meant I would need two C-60 tapes. As I had always done, I could always listen to it, and play the video back in my mind. 

It's ironic, as around the same time, my interest in model rocketry had grown deeper, and a lot more serious. I had a new Estes' Tilt-a-Pad that needed to be broken in. From a neighbor, I purchased an older Electro Launch pad that needed to be tested (these were old, even in 1979). As for rockets, I had four ready to fly; an Avenger, an Icarus, a Streak, all Estes, and an MPC ASP. This movie was simply whetting my appetite to start launching. 

When the movie came on, I wasn't sure what to expect. As it turned out, it was pretty harmless entertainment, especially for a sixteen year old. It was the sort of movie that was pretty typically 1970's. Some said that the plot was very similar to Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon"; I never saw a similarity. The plot was still interesting, though. Salvage yard owner Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) hears that there might be money to be made by salvaging the equipment leftover on the Moon from the Apollo missions (forget the legality of that). He decides to put together a team and build a rocket from bits and pieces that can be bought surplus, as well as material from his own junkyard. The rocket would be known as the "Vulture". 

For the show, a full sized Vulture was made, and it looked... interesting.

To get to the Moon, they would use a powerful propellant known as "monohydrazine". I was already familiar with unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, as it was half of the propellant combination used in the Titan II and III series (the other half was nitrogen tetroxide). Monohydrazine was an extremely powerful substance, with, as they like to say in rocketry, an extremely high specific impulse. A drop was able to send a heavy engine block quite a ways into the air. Since this fuel was so powerful, it would allow the Vulture to use a very slow acceleration. Normally, a rocket needs to have fairly high acceleration, obtaining escape velocity for lunar missions, or orbital missions if you aren't so adventurous. The Vulture would simply go straight up, steadily gaining speed and altitude until it was within the Moon's gravitational influence. At that point, it would turn around and decelerate. One of the features built in to the Vulture was an accordion main fuel tank. As fuel was depleted, it would create more room for cargo. Pretty clever. The Vulture was unique enough to earn a spot in Ron Miller's "The Dream Machines".

Anyway, the movie had fairly common plot devices, such as the federal agent trying to put a stop to the mission, a problem during the mission, awkward humor. And I really liked it.

And as with "Battlestar Galactica", the series that followed disappointed me. There were a total of eighteen episodes, and I watched only a handful.

Over the next few months, my own rockets would punch their own tiny holes in the sky. That summer would see some space oriented science fiction movies, most notably "Alien". Also that summer, the space shuttle Columbia would be ferried cross country, and lose many of its temporary tiles, making many question whether it was a even good idea. In July, the American space station Skylab would finally lose its battle against gravity, and would break up over western Australia.

My own, very modest attempts would climb into the very lowest part of the troposphere, and I would listen to my recording of "Salvage", and wish it had been more than it was. 

Still, I liked the movie. At least what it represented. 

Remembrance

This video I recorded in one take, just my memory of the loss of Challenger.